In many building construction situations, it is necessary to provide a smooth appearance to walls having a finish material that is applied "wet" or in a fluent state. Such materials include, for example, concrete and plaster. While it is possible to sand or polish these materials after they have dried to provide the desired smooth, even surface, it is time consuming and expensive to finish the dried material since such material is necessarily dense and resistant to abrasion.
In pursuit of even, finished walls, one common practice involves the use of a manually operated spray gun with which an operator attempts to apply an even distribution of material to a wall structure. However, the material so applied, such as concrete, is invariably rough and uneven. In typical construction situations, material applications must cover walls of twenty feet in height. Therefore, it is difficult to provide a consistent depth of concrete over a significant portion of the wall using such a manually operated and directed spray gun.
Thus, it is also common practice to employ teams of manual laborers to draw trowels, sometimes of considerable size, over such manually applied surfaces of concrete or plaster. In situations involving high walls, scaffolding must be provided to enable such hand trowelling. This practice is quite obviously time consuming and labor-intensive, and therefore expensive, while still posing a challenge in the provision of even finishes over large surfaces.
While other means have been proposed for finishing surfaces lying in a horizontal plane with less reliance on manual intervention, none have provided rapid, simplified finishing of a vertical wall along both vertical and horizontal axes resulting in a consistently smooth finish with minimal reliance on manual intervention.